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The Filibuster Revisited

By Big Tent Democrat

Last week I wrote about the factually inaccurate assumption underlying Chris Bowers questioning of Dem opposition to the GOP's 2005 Nuclear Option.

My first point was that Bowers was just wrong on his facts. And now no one, not even Chris himself, disputes that.

The second point argued is that the filibuster is more harmful to progressive policy than to "conservative" policy. See Scott Lemieux and Kevin Drum. I think that is largely wrong. For the past 30 years, the essential progressive fight has been the preservation of progressive policy achievement. The filibuster has been very useful in this fight. But I think there is a larger point being missed (that actually cuts both ways in this discussion.) Kevin Drum writes:

[C]onservative legislation, on average, tends to be easier to overturn than liberal legislation. Taxes, for example, go up and down all the time, and conservative tax cuts could be washed away easily by liberals if the filibuster didn't exist. But liberal programs tend to be more permanent. Once they get entrenched, even conservatives are loath to eliminate them. For all the big talk about Social Security in 2005, it wasn't the filibuster that kept George Bush from passing his privatization plan. In the end, he couldn't even get majority support for it.

(Emphasis supplied.) Taxes go up all the time? Really? When is the last time taxes went up? Repeat after me - the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

And for those who do not remember - the bill passed by a single vote in the House and Al Gore had to cast a tiebreaking vote in the Senate.

I am always amazed at how little importance progressives seem to give tax and spending policies. For example, the Bush II Administration spent 8 years trying to cut spending on programs Democrats hold dear. The main reason he could not cut? Why the filibuster of course.

There is a lot of shortsighted analysis that states elimination of the filibuster is "good for progressives." It would be good if progressives control the Presidency and the Congress. If the Republicans do, it clearly would not be good.

As for how groundbreaking progressive policy could be on issues such as health care reform - well, we had a pretty good picture of that last winter after Scott Brown won in Massachusetts and reconciliation became a necessity for the Obama Administration - to wit, it made little difference.

In short, I remain unconvinced that elimination of the filibuster would be a boon to progressives (though it surely would be to democracy.) In short, to paraphrase Scott Lemieux, "the fact that the filibuster made public policy marginally [worse] when the Democrats had control of the government (and only very marginally)" is hardly an argument for progressive benefit to ending the filibuster.

Indeed, the more principled and supportable argument is that eliminating the filibuster is good for small-d democracy. (So would eliminating the Senate altogether, but the Constitution forbids that.) I wonder why some folks feel the need to stray from this stronger point.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 03, 2010 (boomark / email).